President Trump has opened war fronts from Venezuela to Iran to Greenland, but he has also opened peace fronts from Gaza to Ukraine. It is true that, while he claims to have achieved eight peace agreements, in reality he only reached the fringes. Now, he has picked up the Ethiopian file again, having opened it in his first term, in cooperation with the World Bank. Although an agreement was reached at the time in principle, the Ethiopians never returned to Washington to sign it.
The Ethiopian question is far more complex than that of an international river that should be governed by the rules applying to all transborder watercourses, from the Amazon in South America to the Mekong in Asia to the Danube in Europe – though Ethiopia rejects this framing. Instead, it insists that such watercourses fall entirely within the sovereignty of a single state, the source country, and that all downstream states – from the transit states to the mouth – have no sovereign right to them.
Regardless of international water law, when the Ethiopian president next meets his US counterpart, he will most likely claim that Ethiopia is a poor country, sitting in the dark without electricity, while Egypt is a wealthy state, utilising the Nile to produce abundant electric power to meet the needs of all its people. Obviously, Egypt has never been the cause of Ethiopia’s poverty, nor has it been responsible for depriving Ethiopia of electricity. Moreover, Egypt has never objected to Ethiopia generating electricity from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Ethiopia, on the other hand, remains determined to deprive Egypt of the water that has reached it through the Nile for thousands of years.
It is also a fact that Ethiopia has had many historic opportunities for growth and development. Unfortunately, it failed to seize them. Ethiopia is one of the oldest independent states in Africa, indeed in the world, as it dates back more than two thousand years. Unlike all other sub-Saharan African countries, that ancient land preserved its freedom and avoided colonial rule, with one brief exception: its occupation by Italy from 1936 to 1941. In 1974, a military junta overthrew the long-serving Emperor Haile Selassie (who had ruled the country since 1930) and established a socialist state. The country was then scourged by bloody purges and violent internal power struggles, as well as devastating drought, famines, and epidemics. In 1991, a coalition of revolutionary forces, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), overthrew the government, ushering in a shaky transitional period. By 1994, Ethiopia had entered a new phase in its modern history.
Not only has Ethiopia endured decades of political tension and conflict internally and externally (with Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, and Eritrea), it has also suffered extensive social tensions due to the country’s many ethnic and sectarian divides. Ethiopian society is divided into the following national groups: Oromo (34.4 per cent), Amhara (27 per cent), Somali (6.2 per cent), Tigray (Tigrinya), followed by smaller groups; these are 2007 estimates. While the Amhara prevailed during the imperial period, since 1974, the Tigray and Oromo alternated dominance over the key state institutions.
There are also major demographic pressures with economic repercussions. Ethiopia is a predominantly agrarian country, with more than 68 per cent of its population living in rural areas. Rapid population growth increases demand on land resources, exacerbates environmental degradation, and heightens vulnerability to food shortages. More than 40 per cent of the population is under the age of 15, and the fertility rate exceeds five children per woman, rising even higher in rural areas.
Poverty, drought, political repression and forced resettlement have driven internal and external migration since the 1960s. Before the 1974 revolution, only small numbers of the Ethiopian elite went abroad to study and then returned home. Under brutal political regimes, however, thousands fled the country, primarily as refugees. Another large surge of migration to the West occurred between 1982 and 1991, primarily for family reunification. These waves of migration deprived Ethiopia of much of its educated elite.
Whether Ethiopia’s troubles reside in the political system, internal or external conflict, ethnic or sectarian strife, Egypt and the water that flows to it from the Nile have never been the source of the problem, or the cause of Ethiopian poverty or famine. What is striking is that no sooner had Ethiopia achieved a state of relative political stability, enabling it to embark on a period of steady economic growth and development than it chose to start a dispute with Egypt and Sudan over their historical water rights. Instead, it could have chosen to work with its fellow riparian states to establish a system of cooperation and joint development for the use of Nile waters in a manner beneficial to all parties.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 22 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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